To Hear Your Voice
by SabaceanBabe
Summary: A one-shot featuring Finnick, Enobaria, a Capitol Halloween party, and a late-night phone call to one Annie Cresta.


"What the hell are you supposed to be?"

Finnick looked down at his costume, which consisted of thin fabric covered in iridescent scales that shimmered in brilliant shades of green and blue and purple. When he stood still, as he was just then, his stylist's creation gave the illusion of a long, muscular tail with fins, rather than his own two legs. Beneath the fins, his feet were bare; above the tail, which started just above his groin, the rest of him was equally bare.

"Haven't you ever seen a merman before?" Enobaria's only response was one raised eyebrow, nearly lost in the thick, silky fur that covered her head and neck, her shoulders and back, hips and legs. It was the same base color as her hair, streaked with tawny gold. The combination of fur and bare skin drew the eye and all but begged to be touched, just like his own smooth and scaly costume, and he couldn't suppress a shudder.

Enobaria grinned. "I seem to recall something about luring sailors into the deep and trapping them there until they drown?"

"I think that's mermaids, but yeah, same idea." He met her eyes and slowly smiled; her answering growl was feral and a little bit mad, but they understood each other. The only two victors attending Snow's party, they were the only costumed revelers in that sea of color and sound who had no choice. A woman's laugh rose up above the voices and the pounding music, drawing his attention to a slim figure in a hooded red cloak – Emelia Justinian, his date for the night. He had a sudden flash of that red cloak, heavy with water, dragging her under, down and down and down. _Would I help her?_ he wondered. _Or would I just watch her drown?_ To distract himself from that disturbing thought, he asked, "What are you? A werewolf?"

She took a swipe at him with inch long claws, baring her sharp teeth. "It _is_ a full moon."

"Trick or treat!" came a sing-song chorus from behind, and Finnick turned to see half a dozen costumed children, girls and boys both, led by the president's granddaughter, who wore a blue and white dress and a pair of glittering ruby shoes.

"How about I just eat you?" Enobaria abruptly jumped at them, and they scattered with squeals and shouts that melted into giggles as they flocked back in to surround the werewolf and the merman. Finnick couldn't help but laugh. They were just kids, even if one of them was Snow's flesh and blood; he couldn't quite hate them as he did most of their elders.

Smiling at Olympia Snow, he palmed a piece of candy from a pouch belted at his waist and asked, "Why not both?" and reached toward her, apparently drawing the candy from her braided hair. He presented it to her with a flourish and a low bow that made her blush. A moment later her grandfather called, the sound of his voice making Finnick's skin crawl, and she ran off at the head of the pack of children to join him.

"You're quite good with children, sweet Finn."

Gritting his teeth, he turned toward Emelia. "I have a lot of nieces and nephews back home."

Stepping in close by his side, she ran a proprietary hand down his arm, not seeming to notice that he clenched his hand into a fist to keep from jerking away from her. "I'm ready to call it a night," she whispered, her breath warm on his skin. Before he could say anything, another group of kids ran up shouting "trick or treat" and Emelia took a step back so she could rummage through the basket she carried for treats to give them.

"I could rip her throat out for you," Enobaria offered, her voice pitched so that only he could hear.

Watching Emelia, covered head to toe in her red cloak and surrounded by ghosts and vampires and the walking dead, all in miniature, Finnick laughed. "Tempting, but no." He was relatively sure she was joking. He met his fellow victor's gaze as his latest patron dragged herself away from the kids and walked smiling back to Finnick. "See you in the morning, Enobaria." It was only a matter of time before her patron came for her, too.

All traces of amusement vanished from Enobaria's eyes and voice as she told him, "The offer still stands." A mimed bite punctuated her words.

He stood under the shower head and scrubbed at his skin. The heat and the water felt soothing, but a sharp pain along his arm, worsened by the heat of the water, woke him to the fact that he'd scrubbed his skin raw. He watched, fascinated, as rivulets of blood ran from the scratches. Without warning, all the alcohol and food he'd consumed surged back up his throat and he vomited on the shower floor. Shaking and shaken, he watched as the mess dissipated and disappeared down the drain.

"Stop it," Finnick whispered to himself. He looked up at the broad shower head and opened his mouth, catching water to rinse away the taste of sick. He spat and spat again, then stabbed at the shower controls. The waterfall stopped and the air drier began. In less than a minute, he was clean, dry, and ready for use once more, but all he had to wear was the flimsy "costume" he'd abandoned on the bedroom floor a couple of hours earlier. He snorted, bitterly amused. "Fuck that."

Grabbing a towel, he wrapped it around his hips and headed from the bathroom back into the bedroom. Emelia sprawled naked across the bed; the shaft of light from the bathroom fell across her face but didn't wake her. As he padded over to the bed, he kicked something hard and small that spun across the carpet for a couple of feet before coming to a stop. Her phone.

Another quick glance at Emelia confirmed she was dead asleep – and why wouldn't she be, after all the alcohol and at least one recreational pill she'd consumed? – and Finnick grabbed up her phone and left the room, heading toward a small reading room he was fairly sure would be unoccupied at that hour. This was by no means his first party in President Snow's mansion, although he had to admit it was the first one where Snow's granddaughter had set at least part of the guest list. She'd wanted a Halloween party – an ancient holiday all but unheard of in the districts – and Snow had given it to her.

Five minutes later, he sat on the floor of the reading room – more of a nook, really, mostly made up of bookshelves and a single chair and table – punching numbers he'd erase later into Emelia's phone. The only light in the room came from the phone; when that went out, he'd be in darkness, which was what he wanted, just then.

After only a couple of rings, Annie's voice greeted him, flowed over him, soothed his still-roiling stomach.

"Hello?" He gripped the phone more tightly. "Hello?"

"It's me."

"Finnick." He heard the smile in her voice, but he heard the worry, too, as she continued, "Are you okay? I wasn't expecting to hear from you." The light from the phone winked out, but it didn't matter. He closed his eyes anyway, trying to hold back sudden tears. She shouldn't have to expect to hear from him; he should be there with her, not here with whoever paid the highest price. "Finnick?"

"I'm still here." His voice sounded rough.

"There _is_ something wrong. Baby, I'm so sorry I'm not there with you." The echo of his own thoughts startled a laugh from him.

"I'm not. You don't belong here, Annie."

He heard her breathing, steady and strong, through the phone's tiny speaker, heard rustling as she changed positions, probably sitting up in their bed and pulling the sheets higher to keep away the autumn chill. Just the simple fact that she was settling in for a long call, even though it was three in the morning, made him want to talk. He laughed again. _Why did you call her, idiot, if you didn't want to talk before now?_

"I don't know why this one hit me so hard," he began, not know that was what he would talk about before he actually said the words out loud. "She's one of the most vanilla I've had in years, really." But then, maybe that was the problem. Emelia was pretty normal, by most standards, and yet she still had no problem paying an exorbitant sum to use another human being. He shook himself. "I just needed to hear your voice, Annie."

"Okay, then," she said, and for the next few minutes – he had no idea how long – she told him about her day; about Mags chasing down a gull that had stolen a necklace she'd been working on, showing Annie how to braid the cord without it twisting on her; about a song Annie had heard on the radio that morning; about the way the clouds had danced across the sky that night, picking up the colors of the sunset as they tattered and scattered and reformed.

When her voice went hoarse and yet she still launched into another story, this one about a crab she had rescued from a tidal pool a couple of days before, Finnick stopped her. Clearing his throat, he wiped at his eyes, at the moisture there. "I love you, Annie Cresta."

"Of course you do, Finnick Odair. What's not to love?"


End file.
